In Charlie White's surreal world, life is just like the movies - a creep show full of killer special effects.

By Jenn Shreve

Charlie White doesn't take photographs. He constructs them. Like a Hollywood director, he orchestrates scenes, commissions sets, hires actors, and employs a visual effects team. Then he oversees a grueling postproduction process in which each element of the shoot is digitized, scrutinized, and perfected down to the pixel. In essence, he captures an entire f/x film in one frame.

Photo by Fredrik Nilsen

White is a member of the Post-Photography School of Photography, where the hyperreal reigns and the idea of an unadulterated image seems quaint. "A picture is just a million questions now," says White. "Did it really happen? Do I believe it? The picture doesn't lie. It is a lie." His work has appeared in major museums, but he rejects the mainstream photojournalistic approach. Like Post pioneer Cindy Sherman, White favors cinematic staging and elaborate makeup. He isn't afraid to borrow Tinseltown's props or Silicon Valley's computing power.

For White, 31, software is just a tool, like a paintbrush or a camera. A sci-fi fan who fondly remembers seeing Blade Runner when he was 10 and playing Zaxxon on ColecoVision, he says he wasn't much of a techie growing up because his family couldn't afford a computer. That all changed in 1991 when he entered New York's School of Visual Arts and began exploring digital techniques. "Things that were previously not accessible, attainable, executable, were becoming so," he recalls.

Artwork Courtesy of Charlie White

Going into graduate school, White's plan was to make pornography into fine art. "I was so into it," he says. Fortunately for him, it was a time when the art community was heaping attention on smut. White's first major photographic project, Femalien (inset above), depicted a half-alien, half-human, all-naked woman in an elaborately constructed spaceship. The series appeared in the porn magazine Cheri but had wider appeal; the Andrea Rosen Gallery in Manhattan later exhibited the issue.

White has since moved on to less prurient subject matter, but he insists the visual language of porn persists even in his newest work. He points to the shallow sets, the comely blondes, and the unnerving flatness. Evident in all his photographs is a seamless juxtaposition of the strange and the familiar - a monster takes to the Los Angeles streets, a troll sits on the toilet. It's a tribute to the power of his finished prints that how he achieves this look is rarely discussed. But when it comes to White's particular blend of painting, sculpture, cinema, and digital imaging, the how is just as important as the what.

HER PLACE

Artwork Courtesy of Charlie White

The Pitch:E.T. Leaving Las Vegas. This portrait of post-coital depression is seen through the eyes of Joshua, a creature White presents as proxy for a real man. Development: White worked on the image for about a month, with a production crew of three and a budget of around $5000.Preproduction: Joshua, a 5'2" movable figure, was designed with help from White's childhood friend and creature designer Jordu Schell. White turned to Central Casting to hire a petite actress and used a location scouting agency to find a home with a large bathroom. He also specified tile, as he wanted it to look like the bathroom in his childhood home.Production: White shot the scene in one day. He kept the camera angle and Joshua's position the same and moved the actress to various spots in the room.Postproduction: This photograph was printed from a single piece of film, and only minor details were altered (Joshua's feet were made to rest flat against the floor, for example). The lack of overt digital alteration makes the photo read "like a snapshot," says White, providing the viewer with an intimate glimpse into Joshua's troubled psyche.

The Interloper

Artwork Courtesy of Charlie White

The Pitch:The Last Temptation of Sesame Street. Call it a wide-eyed meditation on Christian imagery.Development: White worked on the image for six months, using a crew of 15 and a budget of "tens of thousands of dollars."Preproduction: White hired scenic artist Jonathan Williams to paint a 24- by 35-inch Kinkade-esque work. The resulting canvas was digitally recorded by a stat camera at Warner Bros. Studios and printed onto a 20- by 36-foot backdrop. White ordered grass and bushes and built the rolling hill in the foreground. The backdrop and set were put together at a photo studio. White commissioned Christine Papalexis to design the two puppets with soft features, making each look like an eerie cross between a Muppet and a real child.Production: Over the course of a day, three child actors interacted with the puppets in a variety of scenarios. White shot the scenes on 4- by 5-inch film using a Mamiya camera.Postproduction: White selected more than 20 pictures from the 150 he shot. Working with Studio P, he then separated out the components he wanted to use and recombined and manipulated them with Photoshop. He superimposed a digital scan of the canvas over the backdrop to have better control and more detail. A lightjet printer output the final image on 3- by 5-foot photographic paper.

Fleming House

Artwork Courtesy of Charlie White

The Pitch:Invasion of the Student Body Snatchers.Development: By enlisting volunteers and shooting on-location at Caltech, White was able to keep the budget down to just $2,000. With a crew of four, production was completed in six months.Preproduction: White obtained permission to shoot at the Fleming House dining hall and recruited students, who worked in exchange for a lot of pizza. They wore their own dorm T-shirts. He hired a small team of assistants and lighting experts.Production: The students were directed to act out a variety of scenes, which were photographed over the course of a single evening.Postproduction: White extracted various arrangements of students from some six pieces of film, then arranged them with Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa in mind. He knew that something big would be entering from the side of the room, so he enlarged the doorway. Only after the image of the students was completed, did he turn to creature designer Jordu Schell, who drew on Francisco de Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son to develop the creature's expression. The 12-inch sculpture was placed on a tabletop, photographed using a digital camera, selected out, and inserted into the scene. The image was printed onto 4- by 8-foot photographic paper using a lightjet printer.

Jenn Shreve (jennshreve@yahoo.com) is a freelance writer living in
San Francisco.